


Chills

by littletechiebird



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse, Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics), Superboy (Comic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littletechiebird/pseuds/littletechiebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Request: Tim/Kon, Bulletproof</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chills

The air in Gotham had finally gotten that cold nip to it a week or so before.

The one that made skin raw, and lips chapped, with a single gust of wind. Usually others got excited at the prospect - those that did not hate the winter season itself - and knew what the coming days promised. 

The city streets were bustling with bodies that pushed passed each other. The car horns sounded more frequently, aligning with the growing frustrations and impatience that came with the holiday season. It was so hypocritical, but it had been that way for years, no, decades. Everyone ran around, grew so tense, so unrelenting, and selfish, only to get to the actual holiday itself. It was that day that everyone promised they would rest, enjoy their families and their friends, and appreciate the holiday for what it stood for. Very few kept to that. It was evident with the traffic, the road rage, and disgruntled retail employees. 

Nevertheless, so many still held the best intention in their hearts. Smiles at the thoughts of getting together with loved ones, of the decorations and blinking lights, and of the delicious food to be shared. New memories would be made to be kept for years to come, if not a lifetime.

This was a year where Timothy Drake held onto no such thing.

His eyes were narrowed, cold, so caught up with feeling everything while feeling nothing at all. His body was tense, poised to jump into action in a single moment. The days had passed quickly enough, though maybe not enough so for his liking. He had detached himself from the information that it was Christmas Eve, and on a topic not unrelated, he had turned off his phone at his apartment, and the same went for his phone. He had long gotten irritated a day or so before from all the calls he had received from Dick, from Cassy, and the rest of his teammates who weren’t scared of calling him, or who had not grown tired of their fruitless attempts.

The wind whipped mercilessly to cut at the exposed skin of those who had ventured out on this holiday night. It would be busy, he knew. He had already experienced this. There was a cut or two on his left bicep that had scabbed over. He would look to it later. It had resulted from the second or third round of thugs he had apprehended that night. He had lost an accurate count on how many crooks he had disabled that night. Individually, he had gotten up to the low twenties. Group wise, he was between four and five. He knew his work was nowhere near done.

_“Tim.. Please answer. I.. Everyone wants you to come to the tower. We have a holiday party planned, like we’d been talking about earlier this year. We even did the secret Santa. We got a present for you too. It’ll be waiting under the tree. Please come. Just for a little while.”_

Retrieving the grappling hook from his belt, it was a quick aim and a quicker shot before it flew to attach itself to the chosen ledge, pulling him through the air to supervise another part of the city, trying to do his best to stay away from the heart - the heart, of course, being closer to home. He didn’t want to have any run-ins that night. This was how he would get through that night, and the following day. He’d keep busy. He’d make himself forget.

Forget the plans he’d made with his father.

With Bruce.

With Bart.

…With Kon.

Shutting his eyes tightly, he willed his thought process to get back onto track, listening to the stream of information coming from the bud carefully placed within his ear.

He was tired of lingering on things that no longer had any kind of possibility. He was tired of making it that much harder on himself. 

Damn it. Focus.

It was getting harder and harder. The shadow of himself, the person everyone kept grasping for, the person that everyone continued to try and coax out of him, he was losing himself in it. That was dangerous. Everyone was so displeased with what he was doing now, but what did they want from him? Did they really want that part of him back? The part that was ruled by the emotion that wanted to eat him alive, and that had nearly driven him mad as he had tried to ease the pain by cloning his best friend. The pain that had nearly driven him off so many cliffs.

He had convinced himself he had stepped away from that cliff this way.

The continued sleep deprivation to step up that much more patrol, greater productivity, and more precise action. He was doing what was best. This would benefit everyone.

_“Timmy. ..Little Brother, I know you’ve gotten my messages. Stop pulling away. We all want you here. This is supposed to be a time for families, isn’t it? You need your family, and we need you - no matter how much you think we don’t. Let us help. Please. We all want to. You’ve even got Cass worried. She said she was going to contact you, too. Just.. think about it. But if you don’t at least answer me soon, I’ll come find you, Tim. I know you’ve covered your tracks well, but don’t forget that I know a lot of tricks too.”_

Why was it that that he couldn’t keep his head clear tonight?

Shutting his eyes, he tilted his head back and ran his hand through his hair, drinking in the frigid air that threatened to freeze dry his lungs. He welcomed the sobriety it brought. 

Rolling his head back to look at the street below, he scrutinized every detail, watching every possible movement, waiting for something, for someone, to tip him off to anything at all. It wasn’t like he usually had to try too hard. Most criminals in gotham weren’t too smart. It was like they didn’t understand how obvious they were to the watching eyes of their several superheroes.

It was their choice to be careless.

A group waited just below, standing around obvious, oblivious, and awkward. An uninterested, but questioning eyebrow rose behind his mask. If he had wished to give the energy, he would have sighed and shaken his head. But to him, this was just busy work. 

Taking a step forward, he let himself fall from the rooftop soundlessly, landing on the ground in a crouch with his cape coming to settle at a slower pace behind him. The fools still hadn’t noticed his presence. There were a couple dozen of them, just to start with. It should have been in their favor, in one way or another, to have seen him if only for a moment.

He supposed he shouldn’t have been complaining.

As always, his movements were swift. He moved in, closing the small amount of space, the bottom of his palm slammed into the top of the man’s neck, sending him forward and effectively knocking him out with the single blow. The movement of their coworker’s body falling forward, and the sound of his body hitting the ground brought the proper attention to his arrival. It was likely cockiness, or overconfidence in his desire for a good fight, that brought him to allow them an extra moment to prepare their attacks. A couple men rushed him, while a good lot of them hung back to seemingly start on a different plan of action.

The three that had started to engage him started with wild punches, trying to start on him all at once, as if that would be more effective. If only they knew what strategy was. Ducking and sending a fist into one gut, he turned to kick out the knees of another, and as those two fell, he tackled the other man and brought his head to slam into the ground - not too hard, he was mindful not to crack his skull. He returned to give similar treatment to the man whose knees he had kicked from under him so that he would not be getting back up. The man who he had countered with the single punch, he spun to kick and send flying into a stack of crates. From the sound of the impact, he calculated he wouldn’t be up before the end of the fight with how soon he intended on ending the fight before they would be handed over to the authorities.

But as he turned his attention to one of the lines that had hung back, he felt a twinge of frustration at a miscalculation. He had missed a detail in the moments that he had not properly watched the thugs. He should have noticed the vials they withdrew from the packages they had been watching over. Administering the vials contents to themselves had been a moment he had missed as well. But the hulking out caught his attention. The discoloration of their skin spread, and their skin visibly changed in a tactile sense. Growling echoed through the alley, and he simply sighed in his visible irritation while he looked upon his drooling attackers. “Venom.” He murmured knowingly. 

_“Master Timothy. I ask that you please return one of Master Richard’s calls or Miss Cassandra’s. There has been much worry for you within our little family. Though Master Bruce has not called yet, I know he worries as well. Please take care of yourself and return home soon.”_

There were six of them all at once, growling, drooling, foaming at the mouth. The remaining members who did not partake in the use of the serum stood with guns at the ready. 

In the back of his mind, he wished that he had backup for the coming fight. 

Any backup he would have desired for that moment… was far from available.

Any backup that he willed himself not to call upon… easily available.

Of course those were the current conditions.

Well, this would be interesting.

The gunmen took aim and the venom-filled men barreled forward like enraged, mindless soldiers. He retrieved his staff, extending it to it’s full size and stood at the ready, allowing them to move into range. Shots rang out first, and he moved quickly to avoid them. With the poor lighting, and the amount of guns that were aimed at him, he was at a bit of a disadvantage. He quickly shifted to night vision, hissing as a bullet or two grazed his arm and his thigh. Even so, he did not allow himself to miss a beat. The opponents that were trudging towards him would have a hard time slowing themselves and he knew it. That was one of the simplest realizations he could have. So, vaulting himself over the first over-buffed monstrosity, he rushed the first gunman in his line of sight.

Shifting to the side and ducking in the proper moments, he closed in and knocked the gun from the man’s hands before bringing him to the ground with near-crippling force. The first “success” brought him to move onto the next. Luckily, these brutes were dumb enough to try and take a switch to close combat when he moved in, forgetting their guns. The moment of hesitation between the switch was generally long enough to be able to take each man down, though there were a few that were able to hold their own for a while. But they all met cement soon enough.

Six monstrous men, and seven shooters left. 

This was taking longer than he had thought.

The venom filled tanks were barreling towards him again. Turning, his hands went to his belt, withdrawing explosive discs in one hand, while the other retrieved a few smoke bombs. Throwing the discs first, he allowed the explosions to sound at the collision with each body before he threw down the bombs. Rushing through, he went through the process with each of them. Vaulting onto their backs, he placed one of each of three types of discs, timed precisely. First came the explosive disc, to knock them off course and off balance. Second came the electro disc, to stun and injure, and hopefully even debilitate them somewhat. Finally came the ice disc, to freeze them and completely disengage their fight. He would have to hope and see if it held. 

Flipping back from the final beast’s back, he sent the signals, and the detonations began, one after another. His breath was a slight bit shorter than it had been at the start. The cold air was making his lungs burn, and for a moment, it brought him to wince. There was no time for that.

As if to accentuate this fact, there was a force that brought him to stagger, a tightness and heaviness in his breath, and a pain that grew from a dull ache to a nearly incapacitating fire. A second followed it, making him fall to one knee, and that was a task enough. The pain that came from kneeling, coupled with the first round of pain, made his brain want to shut everything off right then, just to make it stop. Looking down for a foolish momentary self assessment, he watched crimson gush onto equally crimson fabric upon his chest, and tint the black fabric at his hip. 

Shit.

_Careless_.

He had to be quick. He had to finish this.

Darting forward, he went for the two that were closest. They were caught off guard by his movements, seeming to think that those two shots would take him down instantly. If it was anyone else but a bat, sure. It definitely would have, otherwise. But they were down on their luck there. In the moments of the dumb staring, he just placed his hands on either sides of their heads and slammed them together before shifting his hands to the fronts of their faces and slamming them downward.

They would be down for the count.

But dizziness was quickly becoming a problem, and even with high pain tolerance that had been so well trained, this was getting to be a bit much. Breathing wasn’t so easy, either. Why was his vision allowed to swim like that?

A grunt came from his throat, a low, guttural sound as he pushed himself to stand. He couldn’t let these guys get away, and he couldn’t pass out here. There was too much at risk. The hardest part had been done, though. The goons that had been juiced up on venom were taken care of. Just five shooters. 

Five.

Why, in that moment, did five feel like five  _hundred_?

Even summoning all the strength he could, he still swayed on his feet as he stood. The gunmen seemed amused and stowed their guns. They seemed confident that there would be no more spurts like that which had taken down the other two moments before. It was unfortunate that they were likely to be right. 

Leaning against his staff for a bit of support, he was cursing his body for wanting to slacken. Not yet, not yet. He wasn’t done, and he still had to get out of sight. His free hand went to his belt again, retrieving a few simple batarangs, holding them at the ready, waiting as the men approached that much further. He was playing at a bit of danger here, but what about this  _wasn’t_  dangerous? 

He had wanted to forget about the day itself, and he had certainly done just that.

But if he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t be seeing Christmas.

With a bit more of concentrated strength, he flicked his wrist out sending the batarangs flying. Few hit, while others whizzed by. One embedded itself in a man’s side, the other in a other’s shoulder, while the final hit the next man’s hand. while they struggled and cursed, he watched the anger that flashed across the final two’s faces. He didn’t have anything else up his sleeve. 

The smart thing to have done would have been to run.

There were few times where he had made that smarter move on his own.

This was not going to be one of those times.

That ledge he had thought he’d backed away from was right in front of him. He was teetering on the edge.

There was the faintest tug in his mind to just shut his eyes, flinch away, and wait. Just…  _wait._

He had started to.

Closing his eyes hadn’t been the wisest idea, though. As he did, it was as if his body decided that all of his strength and energy that he had been using to stand and to stay awake, was no longer something he was allowed to have. So when it started to slip away so quickly, and he tried to fight for his body to keep from collapsing, he was confused as he heard the sounds echoing around him. The distinct sound of swift cracks that came with a strong and well-aimed hit, likely to the jaw, or some area of the face. Then the unmistakeable sound of thumps that signified bodies hitting the ground. He’d been hearing it for the last while, not to mention years in general by now, so there was no way he could miss it. As if those hadn’t been enough, he’d heard the men’s grunts, cries, and groans to accompany the hits. He’d counted them.

_One._

_Two._

_Three. Four._

_Five._

At first, some part of his mind had expected that those sounds of inflicted injury had somehow been upon him, and he just hadn’t been cognizant enough anymore to recognize the hits and the pain, or the way his body moved. But as he forced his eyes open, just a bit, standing right before him he recognized black, blue, and…

Eyes shut and he slumped forward. 

He didn’t want to make the connection.

It was just a hallucination.

It was just the lack of blood.

Just from the lack of oxygen that had come from his shallow, gasping breaths.

But the warmth that his body came to slump against could not have comforted him any more. It lulled him into a deep slumber.

——————

In the moment of waking, he already could not remember what stirred him. But his eyes began to try and force heavy lids open. It took a few tries, for fatigue wanted to hold them in place, and it seemed like the brightness of the room was wanting to help in that endeavor. But his eyes came to adjust, and he woke a bit more. He stared at a ceiling that he did not expect. Actually, he had not expected a ceiling in the least, because he had not expected to get to wake up again. But this wasn’t a hospital ceiling, nor was it his bedroom ceiling back at his apartment - and yes, he knew the details of something that seemed so simple.

He was back at Wayne Manor.

Taking in a breath, he flinched, eyes shutting tightly again as his body tensed and recoiled. No, he was definitely alive.

“Tim? Are you okay? Are you in pain?”

Eyes immediately snapped open as his body froze, all receptors in his pain momentarily being turned off in favor of a more important event.

That.. No.

Pain or not, he was either dead, and that was real.

Or he was alive, and still hallucinating.

There couldn’t be a compromise.

He had tried to make such a compromise reality, and had failed.

“Tim?”

Finally willing himself to look over, he was sure his heart had stopped, or that his lungs had been cut from his chest.

“Don’t do this to me.”

He hadn’t realized he’d said a thing until he recognized his own broken voice.

The man beside him flinched a bit, seemingly hurt and momentarily confused, before he seemed to recall just why he would be saying such things.

“It’s alright, Tim. I’m here.”

“No. You… You’re dead. I saw. I… I  _checked_  for your pulse. You were  _cold_.”

A sigh left him.

“I know.”

It was almost something akin to defeat in his tone.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been gone for too long.”

He reached out and took Tim’s hand, and in that moment, Tim’s eyes shot wide. He seemed conflicted between pulling away as if to distance himself from a burning flame, or gripping on for dear life.

“No. Prove it. You don’t…” He shook his head. Even now, he couldn’t say it aloud, even if there was a chance that this was just another horrible, painful dream. He couldn’t admit that he’d  _had_  so many dreams like this.

But Kon seemed to understand, and he seemed prepared.

Turning Tim’s hand over, his other hand that had reached into his pocket pressed two small, cool objects into his hand. He stared at their hands for a long moment before withdrawing his own, and then looked to Tim’s face, waiting and watching.

Patiently, he had allowed him to place the bits of proof into his hands, and as Kon withdrew his own, Tim’s eyes widened at the two small objects resting in his palm.

Two small bullets. 

“Just for once.. could you be more careful and remember that you’re not bulletproof?”

Tim clasped his hand tightly around the small bits of metal, the ones that had tried to kill him last night, as his other hand shot out to grasp onto Kon’s and pull him towards him. Kon complied with the weaker tug, and pressed his lips to the boy’s forehead.

He was  _back_.

“Merry Christmas, Tim.”


End file.
